Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen Review

A choice remake of Dragon Quest's most classic chapter

Remaking videogames is hardly an exact science; if it were, we'd have fewer cynically clueless rehashes and more Bionic Commando: Rearmeds and Metroid: Zero Missions. A great remake requires a developer who understands both the good and bad aspects of the original work. Dated or broken game design elements need to be discarded or reworked to complement the strengths.

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen is a remake done right, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving game. The original 8-bit classic -- originally published as Dragon Warrior IV -- is practically inaccessible these days. It's rare, it's expensive, it runs on the unreliable NES hardware, and it's reliant on aging batteries for saving progress. And frankly, the 8-bit Dragon Quests haven't aged well due to their garish colors, gratingly slow gameplay, and obtuse interface design. Yet beneath all of that is a stellar role-playing game, and the DS version casts aside all those flaws and frustrations to reveal the eminently playable role-playing experience beneath.

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Chapters of the Chosen is still Dragon Quest IV at its heart, but there's more going on with this remake than a simple facelift. Combat and exploration move more quickly, the dialogue has been improved, and the quest has been expanded. It bears some similarities to the recent Final Fantasy remakes, although its visual upgrade is much less dramatic, with deliberately rough 3D that almost seems determined to mimic the polygon warping prevalent on the original PlayStation. Still, the graphics are vivid and colorful and lend the game just the right amount of cartoon exuberance to feel suitably Dragon Quest-ish. Characters and monsters are old-fashioned sprites living in a new 3D world, but this surprisingly works to the game's benefit. Battle scenes retain the series' traditional, minimalist look, but the sprite-based enemies are beautifully animated and move quickly. Chapters of the Chosen speeds by much faster than its source material and feels brisker than Final Fantasy IV's DS remake as well.

Even so, it's worth taking your time to appreciate the quality of the game's writing. DQ4's dialogue is interesting both in and out of combat, having discarded the thous and thees of the NES games in favor of almost comical regional dialects. Series advocates have always touted the games' nebulously defined "charm" as a point in its favor, and that whimsical personality comes through clearly here. Dragon Quest IV's unique chapter-based structure deserves much of the credit for the story's appeal; it was nothing short of revolutionary in 1990 and remains unique even now. Outside of a brief prologue, players never see the game's protagonist until the story's fifth chapter, which begins a good 15 hours into the adventure. Instead, they first experience the eponymous "chapters of the chosen" -- brief vignettes that establish the backgrounds, motivations, and personalities of the crew destined to become the hero's party. By the time your party is fully assembled, you'll be as likely to toss favorite characters into your combat roster simply because you like their personality as for mundane considerations like combat efficiency.

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Tubby merchant Torneko Taloon, the game's most popular character, embodies Dragon Quest IV's subversive appeal. He's hardly your typical RPG hero, yet his chapter is far more engrossing as any standard RPG tale. He begins by tending shop and labors toward a final "battle" that consists of a mission to fulfill a requisition order; once he joins the hero's party, he becomes an unpredictable goof-off, as likely to distract the enemy with a "naff gag" (or trip and accidentally inflict a critical blow on an enemy) as he is to follow your directions. He adds an element of humanity to the story, comedy to the dialogue, and risk to the combat -- risk that isn't without its occasional rewards. In my playthrough, he unexpectedly stole one of the most powerful swords in the game from a bad guy hours before I would have come across it in normal play, making the middle stretch of the adventure markedly less stressful.

Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii has said that the ultimate point of his series is to give players a world to explore, a place in which to have an adventure, and that's precisely what Chapters of the Chosen delivers. The first half of the game provides context and characterization for the second half, a wide-open adventure whose boundaries are largely determined by the random encounters your party is capable of surviving. The Japanese RPG was built on Dragon Quest's framework, but the genre has since wandered off in other directions. As a result, this modest remake of a chapter nearly 20 years olds feels almost like a revelation. Despite its relatively small scale and humble presentation, it really does have a grand feel about it -- a sense of scope often lacking in modern console RPGs, whose extravagant graphics and overwrought stories necessitate locking the player into tiny, linear, claustrophobic settings.

Click the image above to check out all Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen screens.

Granted, even in its remade form, the game won't be to everyone's tastes. Pivotal plot events lack the visual oomph of modern RPGs. The combat system, while speedy and full of interesting descriptive text, does tend to be rather limited in mechanics. Characters have a limited repertoire of skills, half of which become useless once more powerful upgrades appear. And while they're usually amusing, the outrrrrrageous regional accents can sometimes clutter the dialogue. All in all, though, Chapters of the Chosen is a more than worthy remake of a gaming great, and RPG fans should consider it a mandatory play. Remakes aren't a science -- they're an art...and Dragon Quest IV has been re-created with deft strokes.

Comments (2)

Well well well.

I forgot all about this game now that i had looked at the reviews my memory came back I wanted this game back on the DS I had just beaten DQ VI Realm of Revalation.Now i had ealize i had missed out on this one but it's still on shelves.I had been tring to remember the game i had wanted on the DS and it turns out it was this one.